Iraqi National Symphony conductor Karim Wasfi fights ISIS with music

A bustling market is in moments a mass grave.

To the inhabitants of east Baghdad, Iraq, this decor of charred vehicles and fallen structures after a bomb blast is an all-too-common sight. It’s a constant reminder by ISIS that death is imminent.

But then, a burst of an impassioned music wakes the residents from their dreary routine. Passersby who faced a bomb attack hours before turn their heads in confusion to see what is disrupting this mournful time.

Then at once, they’re mystified by the sight of famed Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra conductor Karim Wasfi perched on scorched debris, trembling his mop of jet-black hair with Beethoven-like earnest as he drives his bow across his cello.

 

“These streets would still have the wreckage of the previous incident and maybe some horrific scenes, and even … the smell of death,” Wasfi says, describing his morbid stage.

He plays a vibrato, weeping tone — a passage of “Baghdad Mourning Melancholy,” a classical piece he composed.

People walking in the Mansour district, known in better times for its elite social clubs, stop short, one by one, and listen.

Their bewilderment melts into intrigue. A crowd forms. Cell phones come out and record. People hug each other. Smiles break across faces, and an occasional tear streams down this face or that.

People move closer to Wasfi and closer together. For the duration of the song, they are connected and elevated from the horrors that afflict them.

“They went beyond their confusion, and they united through the sound of the cello and the sound of music,” says Wasfi.

This is what the maestro intended all along. It became a campaign that Wasfi calls Music for Peace. He has serenaded the dead at more than a dozen bombing sites since April.

To him, terror attacks kill some instantly but imprison far more of the living.

Wasfi goes to the sites of their deaths to play his counter song, to win back the bruised hearts of the living and strengthen their will to go on.

Video: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/28/middleeast/iraq-musician-karim-wasfi/index.html

Source: www.cnn.com

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